If you read this blog, you've probably figured that I try hard to be productive, at work and at home. My to-do lists tend to be quite ambitious. Usually, I do a pretty good job of staying on task. Even when I don't finish my list, I still make a real dent. But the downside of that effort to be productive is that it wears you down. Eventually, I push myself a bit past my breaking point and I just have to shut down.

So, that's what happened last weekend. By the time I got home from work on Friday, I was just done. I had a long list for Friday night and for the weekend, but I just couldn't. I walked the dog and made myself a bowl of cold cereal for dinner and then I decided to take a short nap on the couch. I woke up long enough to take a phone call and move my sleeping to bed. I slept almost 12 hours.

The rest of my weekend ended up being much more low-key than planned. I went to lunch with a friend, cooked a pan of eggplant parmesan, did my taxes, read two novels, watched a movie, went to church, and went grocery shopping. For me, that's actually a really light weekend. 

It made me realize that I need to put more work into achieving balance in my life. I can't go on pushing myself to the brink and then collapsing for a few days, only to start it all again. But how do I live a productive life that's still a life? How do I accomplish all the projects on my agenda, keep my house in order, exercise, attend to my friends and my community, and still have time for some fun? Step by step and day by day, I need to struggle to balance all of the aspects of my life without exceeding my physical and mental limits.

But, at the same time, I don't want to abandon any of my major projects and I certainly don't want to abandon my friends. So, I continue to look for any extraneous time-wasters I can find.

And maybe I should be a bit less ambitious day-to-day.